To the editor:

I could not agree more with Ken Meyer’s assessment of the current state of financial irresponsibility in Lawrence. The golf course is a duplication of private efforts, the T is a colossal waste of tax dollars. I drive Iowa home from work and see three or four empty buses burning up thousand of dollars of fuel for nothing and do a slow burn.

The current flap over Wal-Mart is nothing other than a class warfare skirmish, the downtown Aggieville crowd versus most of the rest of the population struggling to make ends meet. And the huge traffic snarls on 23rd Street are greeted with comments that we should walk more and ride bicycles. Also those neat traffic obstructions (circles) such as the current boondoggle at 19th and Barker, where no discernible work has occurred and the surrounding streets are clogged getting around this poorly planned and unwanted city intrusion on an old neighborhood.

But this has been the traditional way in Larryville. Spend, spend, spend to respond to the alleged “needs” of residents. And forget the lessons of responsibility, thrift, planning and reasonable actions. And raise the taxes every year, as has been the case in most of the 32 years I have lived here.

Fred Whitehead,

Lawrence